Maybe he should have thrown in Park Place, too.    We here at the BrokenCountry don’t get it.  Politicians spend our money like its Monopoly money all day long.  Perhaps this guy intended to run for office.

A man discovered bleeding from the head at a routine traffic stop in Witchita, Kansas, told police he was the victim of an angry drug dealer – upset that he paid for a hundred dollars worth of crack cocaine using Monopoly money weeks before, St. Louis‘ KSDK NewsChannel 5 reported.

“The man from whom he had bought the drugs was upset and invited him over to his house, and upon arrival struck him in the head several times with a handgun, and other people jumped into the fray,” Gordon Bassham, a spokesman for the police department, told NBC.

The man’s injuries were not life-threatening, and he has since stopped cooperating, but Witchita police are still determined to find the dealer and put him in the big house – without passing go and collecting $200.

“That was not a get out-of-jail-free card,” Bassham told NBC.

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KURT GORMAN had no idea that his Texas girlfriend of four years was on the Internet calling herself JihadJane.

Colleen R. LaRose, whom he met in Ennis, Texas, left the couple’s Montgomery County apartment Aug. 23, the day after his father’s funeral, without telling him, he said.

“I came home and she’s gone. She packed up and left. Didn’t see it coming, didn’t know,” Gorman told the Daily News last night. “I was upset, worried. Maybe something happened to her. You don’t know.”

Yesterday, Gorman, of Pennsburg, 48 miles northwest of Philadelphia, said he finally found out – by reading about her on the Internet.

A federal grand jury indicted LaRose, who also called herself Fatima Rose, allegedly for providing material support for terrorists and for plotting with others to kill a Swedish artist who had depicted the pro-phet Muhammad as a dog.

“I don’t know the details. I don’t want to know them,” said Gorman, who appears to be an easygoing guy with a mustache and beard. Interviewed at his office in Quaker-town, he was dressed in a green and black plaid shirt, black jeans and work boots, and was holding a half-smoked cigarette.

“She never talked about international events, about Muslims, anything,” he said. “It’s very strange. I still can’t believe it.

“The whole thing is crazy.”

A few weeks after LaRose, 5-foot-2 with dirty-blond hair, disappeared, taking most of her clothes, two FBI agents visited him. He said they questioned him, including what she did during the day and whether she used the computer. Nothing to tip him off, he added.

In November or December, Gorman said, he was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury to testify. He said he had been asked about his passport, whether he had given it to her. He said he told the jury no. She was charged with stealing the passport in the indictment.

Prosecutors and agents told him that they were in the middle of an investigation and could not share the details.

He said he figured: “Let them do their job. I don’t want anything to do with it.

“She seemed normal to me. She got mad about some things and happy about others,” he said. Asked what she would get mad about, he replied: “If I was not home when I was supposed to be, that I don’t spend enough time with her, that I work too much.”

As owner of a company that manufactures custom parts for radio towers, he said, “I work until the job gets done.”

The couple lived with his father in a second-floor apartment in a four-unit building on Main Street in Pennsburg. “She was a good person, taking care of my Dad, taking him to the doctor.”

His father sat in a lawn chair on the balcony, said neighbors. “He asked me to go for a cup of coffee,” said Joan Noon, 66, a next-door neighbor.

LaRose didn’t work, and had not graduated from college, but, he said, she was fun to be with.

“I wouldn’t have stayed with her if she was not nice,” he added.

“That’s why when I came home and she was gone, it was a shock to the system.”

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Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., who announced last week that he will resign this evening, suggested over the weekend that it is his own party, desperate to pass health care legislation, that pushed him out, according to this story in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

“Now they’ve gotten rid of me and it will pass,” said Massa, who was one of 39 Democrats who voted against an earlier House version of the health care bill last November.

“Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill, and this administration and this House leadership have said, ‘they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill, and now they’ve gotten rid of me and it will pass.’ You connect the dots,” Massa said, according to a separate story in Roll Call.

During a weekly radio program, Massa also provided more detail about what led to an ongoing investigation by the House ethics committee. He acknowledged making an inappropriate remark to staff member after dancing with a bridesmaid at a wedding. He said the ethics complaint came not from that staffer, but from another at the table.

Last week, On Politics reported here that Massa planned to leave Congress after his term ended this year. In a conference call with reporters, he cited a recurrence of cancer, which he had previously battled in 1996, as the reason for his departure.

But since then, the House ethics committee announced it was investigating Massa and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said his office had been made aware of “allegations of misconduct” against Massa in early February. On Friday, Massa announced he would resign effective today.

But according to Roll Call, Massa also left open the possibility of rescinding his resignation: “I’m not going to be a congressman as of 5 o’clock [Monday] afternoon,” he said. “The only way to stop that is for me to rescind my resignation. That’s the only way to stop it. And the only way that’s going to happen is if this becomes a national story.”

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s furious, final push to get a health care bill passed threatens to shove aside the message he promised would top his list this year: creating jobs.

Even as the White House juggles several enormous issues at once, the public takes its cues about the president’s chief concern from how he spends his time, energy and capital. As Obama himself put it on Wednesday, from now until Congress takes a final vote on a health care overhaul, “I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform.”

That kind of now-or-never campaign means America can expect a debate consumed by health care, again, for weeks.

The White House is trying mightily to focus it on real people and the human cost of inaction. But there will be no escaping the same slog that turned off so many people in 2009 — congressional process, arm-twisting and doomsday rhetoric.

So what unfolds over the next few weeks will affect millions of Americans and alter the course of Obama’s presidency. He has a shrinking window in which to find enough votes within his party to pass health care legislation so he can free himself to spend more bully pulpit time on the single issue that has stoked the public ire since he became president — disappearing jobs.

Polling shows the economy remains a bigger personal worry to people than the cost, access and coverage problems endemic to the health care system.

There is a huge economic element to health care as people struggle to pay premiums or keep their insurance. Yet to many, the astounding loss of jobs is a singular issue that demands constant, bold attention.

It is just this competition — the economy versus health care — that helped define Obama’s grueling first year in office and prompted howls within his own party for a recalibrated jobs-first agenda.

Obama responded with a State of the Union speech on Jan. 27 that was remarkably focused on the economy, dwarfing all other issues. “Creating jobs has to be our number one priority in 2010,” Obama emphasized the next day at a stop in Tampa, Florida.

Yet it was always the reality that Obama would consolidate his attention on health care again, at least for one last blitz. Beyond all the policy implications, Obama has spent a year on it and never intended to let that effort go to waste.

The White House’s political calculation is that the next few weeks are their last chance to push through an overhaul of health coverage. But aides also know it cannot drag on, as every day focused on process overshadows their message.

There is no expectation within the West Wing that voters’ moods will change until they see their lives improving. Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said the plan is to keep plugging away on an agenda to shore up the economy for the long haul.

“We’re going to still be out there on jobs,” Axelrod said, dismissing any worry that the economy-first message will be obscured. “We’re going to be focused on health care for the next few weeks, but we’re still going to be doing jobs.”

To get votes, Obama is lobbying lawmakers, many of whom are teetering in this election year. He’s calling on his 2008 campaign supporters to push Congress for a vote. He’s staging health care events in Philadelphia and St. Louis this coming week.

“They are looking at the election in November, and they need to have one big victory that they can claim,” said Michael Lind, policy director of the economic growth program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. “This is not the victory they would have chosen, because even if it does help the economy, it won’t help most people for years to come. The problem is, there just doesn’t seem to be the ability to do anything significant about jobs this year.”

The House and Senate have passed versions of a $35 billion bill that offers a tax break to companies that hire workers and extends federal highway programs, but even supporters doubt it will create many jobs. By comparison, the economic stimulus bill enacted last year — and not nearly spent out yet — was an $862 billion measure.

Lawmakers plan more steps this year. But there is less political will to keep spending on big jolts to the economy.

Obama has always argued that overhauling health care is not just about health, but also an economic imperative for families who will suffer “if we let this opportunity pass for another year or another decade or another generation” — a message he conveyed Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Part of Obama’s final argument to Democratic lawmakers is that getting health care done will give them momentum on other issues. It’s possible that the opposite is true, and a defeat now could undermine him on other fronts.

Maryland’s Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley said Obama understands that the rising costs of health care are hurting U.S. economic interests long term. Still, he urged Obama to finish up this priority and pivot back to a heavier jobs message.

“If we wrap this up, if we get this passed, it will become clear that health care was always about jobs,” he said.

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Jamie Dimon, chairman of JP Morgan Chase, has warned American investors should be more worried about the risk of default of the state of California than of Greece’s current debt woes.

Everyone knows that California is a greater risk financially than Greece. The socialist machine in Sacramento will simply take any monies from any source and spend it on welfare and illegal immigrants. J.P. Morgan Chase understands this.

California is broken. Its one of the reasons I named this site BrokenCountry.Com. Its been broken for more than 25 years, since the hippies from the Haight Ashbury area of San Francisco decided to run for office.

These socialist assholes have ruined California and turned the state into a mecca for degenerates and low lives from every corner of the planet. Now the state is bankrupt because these same socialist spend every penny sent to Sacramento on their unions, which run the state, and their social programs that they create to ensure that they are re-elected. JD

Mr Dimon told investors at the Wall Street bank’s annual meeting that “there could be contagion” if a state the size of California, the biggest of the United States, had problems making debt repayments. “Greece itself would not be an issue for this company, nor would any other country,” said Mr Dimon. “We don’t really foresee the European Union coming apart.” The senior banker said that JP Morgan Chase and other US rivals are largely immune from the European debt crisis, as the risks have largely been hedged.

California however poses more of a risk, given the state’s $20bn (£13.1bn) budget deficit, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is desperately trying to reduce.

Earlier this week, the state’s legislature passed bills that will cut the deficit by $2.8bn through budget cuts and other measures. However the former Hollywood film star turned politician is looking for $8.9bn of cuts over the next 16 months, and is also hoping for as much as $7bn of handouts from the federal government.

Earlier this week, John Chiang, the state’s controller, said that if a workable plan to reduce the deficit and increase cash levels is not reached soon, he will have to return to issuing IOU’s, forcing state workers to take additional unpaid leave and potentially freezing spending.

Last summer, California issued $3bn of IOU’s to creditors including residents owed tax refunds as a way of staving off a cash crisis.

“I can’t write checks without money; that’s against the law. My main goal is to keep the state afloat, but I won’t be able to do it without the help of new legislation,” said Mr Chiang.

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WASHINGTON- In yet another stunning show of disdain for American voters, President Obama had his left wing radicals all over the Sunday morning news shows trying desperately to keep health care reform alive.

Obama has demanded what the White House calls “a simple up or down” vote on the massive spending bill designed to nationalize the U.S. health care system.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and compared passing health care reform to selling pie. Pelosi said “you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell.”

We are still trying to figure out what selling pie has to do with health care reform, especially in light of the fact that the legislation contains a special tax on pie to help fund it.

In voicing support for a simple majority vote, White House health reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle signaled Obama’s intention to push the Democratic-crafted bill under Senate rules that would overcome GOP stalling tactics.

Republicans unanimously oppose the Democratic proposals. Without GOP support, Obama’s only chance of emerging with a policy and political victory is to bypass the bipartisanship he promoted during his televised seven-hour health care summit Thursday.

“We’re not talking about changing any rules here,” DeParle said. “All the president’s talking about is: Do we need to address this problem and does it make sense to have a simple, up-or-down vote on whether or not we want to fix these problems?”

DeParle was optimistic that the president would have the votes to pass the massive bill. But none of legislation’s advocates who spoke on Sunday indicated that those votes were in hand.

“I think we will get to that point where we will have the votes,” predicted Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a member of the Senate Democratic leadership. “I believe that we will pass health care reform this spring.”

In a sober call to arms, Pelosi said lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public. “We’re not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress,” she said. “We’re here to do the job for the American people.”

Pelosi said it took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, she said, “and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill.”

It’s unclear whether Pelosi’s remarks will embolden or chill dozens of moderate House Democrats who face withering criticisms of the health care proposal in visits with constituents and in national polls. Republican lawmaker unanimously oppose the health care proposals, and many GOP strategists believe voters will turn against Democrats in the November elections.

Pelosi, from San Francisco, is more liberal than scores of her Democratic colleagues. But she generally walks a careful line between urging them to back left-of-center policies and giving them a green light to buck party leaders to improve their re-election hopes.

Her comments seemed to acknowledge the widely held view that Democrats will lose House seats this fall—maybe a lot. They now control the chamber 255 to 178, with two vacancies. Pelosi stopped well short of suggesting Democrats could lose their majority, but she called on members of her party to make a bold move on health care with no prospects of GOP help.

“Time is up,” she said. “We really have to go forth.”

Her comments somewhat echoed those of President Barack Obama, who said at the end of last week’s bipartisan health care summit that Congress should act on the issue and let voters render their verdicts. “That’s what elections are for,” he said.

The White House is redoubling efforts to remind voters that the Senate passed an Obama-backed health care bill in December with 60 votes. Every Republican voted against that bill. A Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts in January, however, left Democrats one vote shy of the number necessary to overcome GOP filibusters.

As a result, a new plan would call for the House to pass the Senate bill and send it to Obama. The Senate would then use budget reconciliation rules to make several changes demanded by House Democrats. Those rules prohibit filibusters.

Exactly what the legislation would look like remained a matter of negotiation within Democratic ranks. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, “is working with his caucus, the White House and the House leadership on strategy and next steps,” Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Sunday.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky renewed his party’s demand that Obama and the Democrats start over and write a bipartisan health care bill. He said that while the reconciliation process has been used to pass legislation in the past, it should not apply to health care legislation.

“There are a number of other Republicans who do not think something of this magnitude ought to be jammed down the throats of a public that doesn’t want it through this kind of device,” McConnell said.

Pelosi said that “in a matter of days” Democrats will have specific legislative language on health care to show to the public and to wavering lawmakers. She predicted voters will warm up to the bill once they understand its details.

“When we have a bill,” she said, “you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell.”

Pelosi appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and CNN’s “State of the Union.” DeParle was on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” while Menendez appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and McConnell spoke on CNN.

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Saturday that he’s ready to compromise with Republicans if they’re serious about it but that his health care overhaul must go forward.

Obama’s comments in his weekly Internet and radio address, two days after an all-day bipartisan summit across from the White House, were the latest sign that Democrats are girding to try to plow sweeping health care legislation through Congress with no Republicans on board.

Success will require colossal efforts on the part of Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress to round up votes after a year of corrosive debate and a Senate special-election upset that threw the overhaul effort into limbo last month. But Obama and the Democrats reject the piecemeal approach sought by Republicans and have no intention of scrapping their 10-year, $1 trillion bill and starting over as the GOP demands.

“I am eager and willing to move forward with members of both parties on health care if the other side is serious about coming together to resolve our differences and get this done. But I also believe that we cannot lose the opportunity to meet this challenge,” Obama said.

“The tens of millions of men and women who cannot afford their health insurance cannot wait another generation for us to act. Small businesses cannot wait. Americans with pre-existing conditions cannot wait. State and federal budgets cannot sustain these rising costs.

“It is time for those of us in Washington to live up to our responsibilities to the American people and to future generations,” Obama said. “So let’s get this done.”
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Obama’s legislation would insure some 30 million more Americans over 10 years with a new requirement for nearly everyone to carry insurance and would end insurance company practices such as denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Republicans generally oppose mandates that make everyone get insurance, and although they want people with pre-existing conditions to be able to buy insurance, they would try to address the problem without new requirements on insurance companies.

Obama plans to unveil an updated proposal this coming week, likely on Wednesday, according to press secretary Robert Gibbs. Gibbs suggested it would include concepts put forward by Republicans at the summit. One Republican who was there, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., was contacted Friday by the White House and asked to submit details of suggestions he made on rooting out waste and fraud from the medical system, Coburn’s spokesman said.

Spokesman John Hart said that Coburn views Obama’s legislation as a government takeover and would not be able to support it even if it’s changed to include some of his proposals.

Adding Republican ideas is not likely to win Republican votes because the GOP insists Democrats should start from scratch. But Obama would be able to say that he’d listened to Republicans and attempted to meet them part way, and that could give Democrats political cover to move forward on their own. Doing so would require use of controversial Senate rules that would let Democrats pass legislation with a simple majority instead of the 60-vote supermajority they no longer command.

The approach infuriates Republicans and is opposed by some Democratic moderates because of its partisan nature.

Coburn, the GOP’s weekly address, argued against a Democrats-only bill.

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Its an interesting time in politics. Americans, frustrated with the current Jimmy Carter like malaise in Washington, are lashing out like never before against the political tyranny of the Obama administration and the seemingly deaf ear that the democrats are turning toward the very people that put them in office.

All across America, the people are showing their frustration with the democrats and Obama by voting for republicans in an attempt to slow the spread of Obamunism.

Meanwhile, Obama and Nancy Pelosi continue to push health care reform, even though it is incredibly unpopular with the people. The people have been against this from the start, but the media, desperate to prop up their golden boy, kept trying to convince the people that socialized medicine was a good idea and good for Americans.

It was during the summer break in Congress when the congressmen had to go face their constituents, that the truth was learned. The people came out in droves to town hall meetings to tell their elected officials what they thought about health care reform.

The media again tried to keep Obamacare alive by first ignoring the town hall meeting melees, then ridiculing the “Tea Party” protesters by calling them “Tea Baggers” a sexual reference, claiming that these people were in the minority and their protests were “racially motivated.” Oh how quickly we forget.

Only after all of this did the American people turn out to show the democrats how angry they really were by voting out any incumbent or democrat they could.

Still, with all of the resistance from the people, Obama and Pelosi are still trying to push health care reform. As early as this morning, Obama showed his disdain of the people by saying, “We are going to move forward with or without republican support and pass this thing.”

Obama continued “If the people don’t like it, (pause for stuttering) well that’s what elections are for.” The level of arrogance displayed by Obama is what really pisses the American voter off. The guy just doesn’t get it.

This is not the Obama the people voted for. If you subtract the blacks who voted for Obama simply because he is half black, it was largely white America that elected Obama. They did so because Obama seemed like a regular Joe. Like a real person interested in the people of America.

Instead what they got the day after the election was an arrogant, pompous asshole hell bent on turning America into France.

Today as I type this, Obama and the left wing of the democratic party are planing to subjugate the American people and make an end run around the U.S. Constitution by using reconciliation to ram health care reform through the senate.

This is the same reconciliation process that the democrats in Washington today derided when the republicans under G.W. Bush were going to use it to pass their legislation back in 2005.

The hypocrisy continues to drive the democrats further into the political cellar. I am sure there is more to come. JD

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So this is one of the pressing, important issues that faces California today. Whether or not people are cussing. Geez Louise, the state is bankrupt, but the Mamalukes that run the state of California are worried about people cussing.

We have good reason to cuss Damn it. Mostly because you idiots in Sacramento have ruined the state of California with your socialist policy that has turned the state into a mecca for lazy ass people and illegal aliens to come glom off of the welfare system and all the other built in freebies you assholes have created.

Feeling a little salty? Better get it out of your system while you can.

Amid the ongoing — and occasionally tense — debate over how to clean up California’s budget mess, lawmakers have taken time out to tidy something else almost as unmanageable: our language. This morning, the Assembly approved a ceremonial resolution turning the first week of March into “Cuss Free Week.”

Once the Senate follows suit, say good-bye to four-letter words, a few choice compound words and probably certain gestures, too. Not that police officers will be waiting with soap. That’s isn’t the point.

According to sponsors of the measure — inspired by a Southern California teen whose creation of a “no cussing” school club sparked an international movement — it’s more about minding the delicate sensibilities of those around you. Like your grandmother.

“When we’re at our grandmother’s house,” said Anthony Portantino, D-La Canada/Flintridge, “we have respect and decorum.”

Are there more important things on government’s agenda right now? Sure, Portantino concedes. But maybe a little civility is just the prescription to help “break through that log jam.”

To keep folks honest, Portantino is handing out no-cuss jars to all 120 legislative offices in the Capitol — and to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Every time a naughty word slips out, a few coins get dropped in.

How’s that for a deficit-reduction strategy?

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Three big companies quit an influential lobbying group that had focused on shaping climate-change legislation, in the latest sign that support for an ambitious bill is melting away.

Oil giants BP PLC and ConocoPhillips and heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. said Tuesday they won’t renew their membership in the three-year-old U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a broad business-environmental coalition that had been instrumental in building support in Washington for capping emissions of greenhouse gases.

The move comes as debate over climate change intensifies and concerns mount about the cost of capping greenhouse-gas emissions.

On a range of issues, from climate change to health care, skepticism is growing in Washington that Congress will pass any major legislation in a contentious election year in which Republicans are expected to gain seats. For companies, the shifting winds have reduced pressure to find common ground, leading them to pursue their own, sometimes conflicting interests.

Last week, the head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Billy Tauzin, said he would step down as president of the industry’s main lobby in Washington, amid criticism from some in the industry over the alliance he made last year with the White House to support health-care legislation.

The administration had worked hard to persuade industry groups to climb aboard its major legislative initiatives—a tack many business interests saw as sensible following the Democrats’ big gains in the 2008 elections. But “unlikely bedfellows make for breakups,” said Kevin Book, managing director of Clearview Energy Partners, a consulting firm.

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Spokesmen for ConocoPhillips and BP said the companies still support legislation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, but believe they can accomplish more working outside USCAP’s umbrella. Caterpillar said it plans to focus on commercializing green technologies.

ConocoPhillips’s senior vice president for government affairs, Red Cavaney, said the USCAP was focused on getting a climate-change bill passed, whereas Conoco is increasingly concerned with what the details of such a bill would be.

“USCAP was starting to do more and more on trying to get a bill out without trying to work as much on the substance of it,” Mr. Cavaney said.

A spokesman for USCAP said it intends to continue its work. More than 20 other large companies, including oil company Royal Dutch Shell PLC and industrial heavyweights General Electric Co. and Honeywell International Inc., remain in the coalition with environmental groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council. The USCAP said it expects to add new members in coming months.

“We think there’s momentum to get [a climate bill] done,” USCAP spokesman Tad Segal said. “President [Barack] Obama’s State of the Union address made it clear the administration is behind us.”

But experts said the companies’ decision to withdraw from USCAP is a sign the politics of climate change is shifting in Washington. When Mr. Obama took office, Congress appeared to have momentum for a climate bill that would push the economy toward lower-carbon alternatives. But as the economy soured, support waned.

The Obama administration says it will curb greenhouse-gas emissions using the Clean Air Act if Congress doesn’t act, and the Environmental Protection Agency has been pushing ahead with rule making.

When USCAP was founded in 2007, leaders of big U.S. companies had grown concerned that Democrats in Congress were preparing to put strict limits on industrial emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to climate change. Many executives decided it was better to be part of the debate in a united front.

“The saying in Washington is that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” said Whitney Stanco, an energy policy analyst for Concept Capital, a Washington research firm.

The big-tent approach boosted USCAP’s influence. In January 2009, the group released its recommendations for legislation. Many were incorporated into legislation, adopted by the House, that would require companies to reduce carbon emissions or buy pollution credits from firms that did.

But not all of USCAP’s members supported the bill. Caterpillar objected in part because it would impose tariffs on goods from countries that didn’t match U.S. efforts to combat climate change. BP and Conoco opposed it on the grounds that it didn’t treat energy producers equally.

As long as climate legislation appeared imminent, companies were willing to paper over their differences and continue to work together. But by late last year, momentum had stalled in the Senate as Washington turned its attention to health care, the economy and the midterm elections. Few experts expect a bill to pass this year.

USCAP isn’t the only group to be roiled by the issue. Last year, several members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce quit the group over its stance against the climate bill.

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Ah, the subtle ironies of life. Joe the plumber. Remember this guy? He dared to ask then candidate Obama about buying a new business and how Obama was going to raise taxes on small businesses if elected.

Obama’s answer was actually a precursor to the way things have turned out with his presidency. Obama stammered through a lot of platitudes that never really answered poor Joe’s original question.

Meanwhile, the liberal media, seemingly embarrassed by a country bumkin like Joe the Plumber, went on the offensive and attacked Joe the Plumber for weeks, making fun of and ridiculing him. Making him out to be a charlatan for asking a hypothetical question of the media’s golden boy, Barack Obama.

The media elite sent out their staffers and reporters to dig up any dirt on Joe the Plumber that they could find. Nothing was going to stop them from getting a dullard elected to the highest office in the land.

Joe was put on the defensive. It was learned that he was not a licensed plumber at all, but a menial laborer for another plumber. His tax records were scrutinized and made public. Joe’s personal life was dragged into the spotlight for all to see.

Here we are a year and a half later, and Joe the Plumber is still looking for his fifteen minutes of fame by telling the very same media that Palin and McCain somehow “used” him and just wanted to get elected.

When asked why he was biting McCain’s hand, after it was McCain who shone the national spotlight on him by repeated references in a presidential candidates’ debate, Joe said “I don’t owe him shit. He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it.”

We think that perhaps Joe the Plumber is a bit confused here. McCain and Palin simply referenced his question to Obama in stump speeches. They didn’t vilify him and publicly flog him like the liberal media did.

The way the media portrayed Joe the Plumber, you would have thought he was a shill that was told what questions to ask Obama by McCain himself, but clearly that is not the way it happened.

Today, the media is still trying to prop us their golden boy, but almost daily Obama proves to us all that he is way in over his head. The man will be the next Jimmy Carter. We here at BrokenCountry.com have been saying this since before the election.

It makes us wonder if things would have turned out different if Joe the Plumber was not dragged through the mud by Obama and his accomplices in the media.

Had the media simply back the right candidate, Hillary Clinton, where would our economy be today? Hillary had been in the white house with her husband Bill Clinton for eight years. Clearly she was the most experienced candidate.

Think about it. If Hillary Clinton was elected president, the democrats would not be running for their elective lives this coming November.

Hillary has been down “health care reform road” before with Bill. She is smarter then to think that she could simply force ideas upon Americans with complete disregard for what Americans want. It would have completely changed the current political landscape of Washington today.

Ten years from today when looking back at the recession, the 2008 elections and everything in between, it should be the American media that are held responsible for the debacle we call the Obama Administration. JD

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This is embarrassing.   How many times can the Obama administration officials pull boneheaded moves and get away with it?   Robert Gibbs is the White House Press Secretary,  Not Shecky Green on stage at the Improv.

Gibbs represents the President of the United States,  so either this was a directive of President Obama,  or Gibbs making a fool of himself.  You don’t stand up there,  representing the President,  all the while cracking jokes.

Sarah Palin is a private citizen at this point,  not a politician.   She is not open to scrutiny from the sitting administration.

Its no wonder the world looks at Obama as a buffoon.   JD

WASHINGTON — Even the White House’s top spokesman is getting in on the act of mocking former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin for looking to talking points written on her palm during a speech to “tea party” activists.

Robert Gibbs showed the words “hope” and “change” on his hand as he started his daily briefing with reporters on Tuesday.

Many in the room, where President Barack Obama had spoken just moments before about the need for bipartisanship, groaned at the political shot.

Palin spoke Saturday in Nashville and photographs and video show she had “energy,” “tax” and “lift American spirits” on her hand. During one question, she looked down at the palm of her hand for a cue.

In her speech she mocked Obama’s use of teleprompters.

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President Obama, after spending his entire first year jetting about the world meeting foreign leaders and trying to secure the Olympic Games for Chicago in 2016 only to be snubbed by the International Olympic Committee, held a press conference today.

Obama, stammering through most of the questions and answers portion of the conference, talked about creating a jobs bill and health care reform.

When asked by a reporter why he would still be pushing the current health care package when the house and the senate will not pass the legislation, Obama spoke mostly in platitudes and mentioned California, where health premiums just went up thirty nine percent.

When the follow up question was asked, Why not start over on health care reform, Obama said “there are key issues in the current legislation that we need to get past in a bipartisan way.”

President Obama was clearly out of his element during the Q and A portion of the press conference. He seemed lonely without the help of his teleprompters to tell him want to say. He was searching for words, sometimes actually stuttering worse than George W. Bush.

When asked about how he was going to create jobs, Obama said, “We are going to have to be on the cutting edge of green energy, and if we are going to lead the world in this technology, we have to invest in it.”

Obama also added that “nuclear generation” of electricity would be a part of that jobs bill.

When asked if he could get a bill passed that included the nuclear power generation, Obama said he would have to work with both parties and environmentalists to get it passed.

Obama was then asked about Iran and the implications of refining a higher quality grade of uranium, Obama threatened more economic sanctions. Obama also said that the U.N. would be involved in the process of stopping Iran in their quest for nuclear weapons.

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City Council member Larry Seabrook is facing federal criminal charges in an indictment expected Tuesday afternoon, sources said.

Details were unavailable about the nature of the charges against the three-term city official, a former state senator.

People briefed on the matter told the New York Times the charges include money laundering, conspiracy to commit mail fraud mail and wire fraud, mail and wire fraud, extortion and receiving an unlawful gratuity.

The indictment apparently stems from a joint city-state probe of City Council funding of non-profit groups. Seabrook was already in custody after his arrest, sources said.

The federal indictment will be unsealed later Tuesday.

The Bronx council member is also a former state assemblyman.

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President Obama, still trying to convince himself that its everybody else, not him, has once again let his ego get the best of him. In another colossal blunder, The White House has now accused any and all of its critics of helping to further the cause of Al Qaeda!

We here at BrokenCountry.com want to make sure we have this straight. Obama, who is a meglomaniac that has become so obsessed with being loved by the people, is now telling people that if you disagree with his policy and you are critical of his administration, you are aiding and abetting America’s sworn enemy?

Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism — responds to critics of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies by saying “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.”

Brennan writes that, “Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill.”

In the oped, titled “‘We need no lectures’: Administration disrupts terrorists’ plots, takes fight to them abroad,” Brennan writes that politics “should never get in the way of national security. But too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points, instead of coming together to keep us safe.”

The administration op-ed is in response to a USA Today editorial entitled “National security team fails to inspire confidence; Officials’ handling of Christmas Day attack looks like amateur hour.”

Brennan provides a detailed defense of the administration’s handling of failed Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab whom, he says, was “thoroughly interrogated and provided important information.”

He suggests that many critics are hypocritical and clueless.

The most important breakthrough in the interrogation occurred “after Abdulmutallab was read his rights, which the FBI made standard policy under Michael Mukasey, President Bush’s attorney general,” he writes, noting that failed shoe bomber Richard Reid “was read his Miranda rights five minutes after being taken off a plane he tried to blow up. The same people who criticize the president today were silent back then.”

Brennan said anyone who wants to change the policy would be casting aside lessons learned “in waging this war” on extremists.

“Terrorists such as Jose Padilla and Saleh al-Mari did not cooperate when transferred to military custody, which can harden one’s determination to resist cooperation,” he writes.

He calls it “naive to think that transferring Abdulmutallab to military custody would have caused an outpouring of information. There is little difference between military and civilian custody, other than an interrogator with a uniform. The suspect gets access to a lawyer, and interrogation rules are nearly identical.”

Moreover, Brennan says, hundreds of terrorists have been convicted in criminal courts while only three have been convicted in the military tribunal system.

The former CIA official also asserts that the Obama administration is doing a better job than the Bush administration did in taking the fight to al Qaeda. “This administration’s efforts have disrupted dozens of terrorist plots against the homeland and been responsible for killing and capturing hundreds of hard-core terrorists, including senior leaders in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond — far more than in 2008.”

“We need no lectures about the fact that this nation is at war,” he says.

USA Today’s editorial writers see it all a bit differently, of course, writing that though “the Obama administration’s national security officials have struggled to assure the public that they know exactly what they’re doing,” they are so far “achieving the opposite, and they’re needlessly adding some jitters in the process.”

The editorial writers fault the Obama administration for announcing “last week that an attack by al-Qaeda is likely in the next three to six months. The warning is bound to frighten the public, with no obvious benefit beyond the ability to say ‘I told you so.’”

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